


My Heart is Gold and My Hands are Cold

by st_aurafina



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Battlefields, Blood, Blood Drinking, F/F, Root | Samantha Groves Lives, Show level violence, Vampires, Witches, catacombs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:54:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24572620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/st_aurafina/pseuds/st_aurafina
Summary: Shaw should probably kill this annoying witch, but eventually even she has to admit: they're better as a team.
Relationships: Root | Samantha Groves/Sameen Shaw
Comments: 12
Kudos: 55
Collections: Exchange of Interest 2020





	My Heart is Gold and My Hands are Cold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theotherpope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theotherpope/gifts).



> Thank you to my discord friends who helped me get this done! I'd be lost without you guys. 
> 
> Prompt: _I think some kind of supernatural AU would be cool, or a god AU or angel/devil AU. Either way, Root and Shaw have been in a centuries long cat and mouse game, and neither really knows what they would do if it were to ever end._
> 
> Title from _Gasoline_ by Halsey.

Paris 1789

There's a lot of reasons Shaw likes to sleep in the ossuary. It's not just because sleeping with the dead is classically hilarious to a vampire. Not many people dare to enter the catacombs, apart from the occasional priest or nun to pray for the souls of the deceased. Most people say the tunnels are haunted, which is a reasonable assumption, given the rooms full of skulls, the piles and piles of bones. 

More importantly to Shaw, the catacombs are quiet. She can sleep in peace, rise with the setting sun, go out to feed, and never have to look another person in the eye. If anyone asked her what she missed from her time as a living woman, other people would not be on her list. Meat would definitely be on her list. Meat and garlic, oh, how she misses garlic. She misses garlic so much, she smells it in her dream: her mother's _torshi seer_ , whole heads of garlic floating in vinegar for seven years, slowly turning a deep red-gold inside the ceramic jar. Cracking the seal on the jar for the New Year feast, and the aroma spilling out to brighten the air. Mmm. Garlic. Why is she dreaming of garlic? 

Shaw chokes and coughs, woken too early by garlic fumes surrounding her. She's still in her sarcophagus, though the lid has been removed. Someone has wrapped her arms in silver chains, thin but unbreakable, and those chains are covered in wreathes of garlic. She has to hold very still, to keep the burning to a minimum. 

"I'm sorry, I know that's really uncomfortable for you." The voice comes from somewhere outside the sarcophagus. The voice doesn't sounds very sorry. The voice sounds positively delighted. Shaw would open her mouth to snarl – she has an excellent, terrifying snarl, and a bite to match – but that would let in more garlic fumes. 

"I just need you to hold really still for a moment." 

A figure leans over the edge of the sarcophagus, and though her eyes are streaming from the garlic, Shaw sees that it's a nun, thin and tall with wide, mad eyes. She's also carrying a knife. A long, thin knife that gleams with reflected light from the lantern. 

Shaw hisses, and starts to fight the chains, though the silver blisters her skin. 

"Shhhh," says the skinny mad nun. "If I wanted to kill you, I'd have brought a wooden stake. Well. I did bring a wooden stake in case things got out of hand, but you have to understand. I don't want to hurt you. Much. I just want a little blood." 

Shaw isn't stupid, she doesn't believe that bullshit for a moment. There's not much she can do, restrained as she is, so she goes still and observes, waiting for her chance to act. That'll be a while, she thinks, as the garlic fumes waft around her sarcophagus. The skinny mad nun has thought of everything: chains, garlic, long knife, wooden stake. Weird sharp glass tube that the nun is passing through a flame. 

"Isn't it nice? the nun says, conversationally. "It's hard to draw the glass out that thin, so it cost me a lot of money, but it lets the blood run out clean." 

"Fuck you!" Shaw's voice is hoarse; she doesn't talk much these days. Not much conversation to be had when you're draining someone out. 

Rather than being intimidated, the nun grins. "That's an enticing prospect," she says. Then she waves her little glass tube. "Blood first, though." 

The tube is as thin, hollow like a reed, and the end is sharpened to a knife-edge so it slips into Shaw's brachial artery easily. Shaw watches, fascinated, as dark red blood drips down the tube, viscous and oily. The nun catches each drop in a phial. 

"What do you need dead blood for?" Shaw asks, to distract from the fact that she's wriggling one wrist free. Her arm is blistering, but it will be worth it to sink her teeth into the skinny mad nun's flesh. Escaping is slow and painful, but she's going to reward herself with the long white column of this woman's throat. 

The nun raises the phial up to the torchlight, assessing the amount she has collected. "It's an interesting story," she says, carefully corking the phial. ""When I was born, my mother said a God was waiting to meet me, but I'd never live long enough to see Her." She smirks. "We'll see about that. I found a spell. For vitality elixir. And vampire blood is an essential ingredient." 

Shaw looks at the nun, looks at the phial inscribed with alchemical symbols. "Oh, you're a witch. Good. I've never eaten a witch." 

The nun tucks the phial away inside her habit. "As tempting as that sounds, I'll be leaving now." 

Shaw rattles the chains despite the sizzling of her own flesh. "I'm coming after you, witch. I've got your scent. I'll drain you dry. 

The nun drops her torch to the ground with a nonchalant gesture. Fire creeps along the line of a rotting shroud towards the wood shelves full of bones. "I don't think so," she says "This isn't the only fire starting in Paris. You should mix with people more often. You've missed a certain revolutionary turn in the air." She shrugs at Shaw. "Maybe it will suit you? The omens are telling me that the streets will run with blood." 

Shaw is too busy tearing herself free from the silver chains and garlic to stop the nun's escape. By the time she's free, there's too much smoke for her to track the women by scent, and she has to run or she'll be nothing but ash herself.

* * *

1861, Pennsylvania 

Shaw takes herself far away from Paris, all the way to the New World. Admittedly, it's not such a new world these days, not in the middle of this ugly civil war. Talk about bloody, Shaw thinks, skulking through the camp after a particularly ugly engagement. She doesn't know or care whose side this army belongs to. Both sides have dying men a'plenty, and most of them begging for Shaw to end their pain. She's happy to save them. The medicine these people use is brutal and primitive. The filth would make Shaw's father weep. Shaw's father whose heart was large and good, who taught her healing from the pages of Ibn Sina's canon, who had the mysterious knack of truly caring for people. Shaw was never a physician the way he was. She has always been a much better hunter than a healer.

For a vampire, the attractive thing about a war is the chaos, and this war has plenty. The camp is lit by flickering torches, with people rushing this way and that, shadows obscuring all identities. Shaw wears the muddy uniform of a dead soldier, puts her hair into a neat queue and nobody questions her presence in the infirmary. 

It's there that she hears a soldier muttering to another about the witch they have prisoner, and her skin prickles. She brings the soldier a cup of water and holds it for him so he can drink. 

"What's this about a witch?" she says, pitching her voice low. He swallows the water greedily and holds the cup up for more. 

His voice is shaky with fever. Shaw's father may have been the better healer but even Shaw sees that this man will be dead by morning. "Get me some rum, brother, and I'll tell you everything."

She laughs, and fetches out the flask she lifted from a corpse on the battlefield. "Here you go, soldier." The liquor has been watered down so much it barely smells of rum, but the man takes the flask from her and downs the lot. 

When there's no more rum to drink, he swipes his sleeve across his mouth. "Colonel caught himself a witch," he says. "Mean little piece, too. Keeps her chained up in a wagon, makes her tell him the future. Which way to move his men, go this way and that." He grins at her, all seven rotten teeth showing. "You gotta beat it out of her, I heard him say, else you don't know if she speaks true." 

Shaw wants to grin with him, to laugh at the joke then take his blood and move onto the next dying man, but there's something hungry in his expression that revolts her. This is an ugly war, and she should know: she's seen enough of them. Shaw decides she's tired of mud and pain and ugliness. She leaves the infirmary and heads for the palisade where the wagons are arranged in a defensive line. 

Away from the main body of the camp, the air is cleaner and there's less noise. Shaw shakes herself like a dog, letting the breeze carry away the stink of the infirmary. There's a guard posted around one covered wagon, the one with iron bars over the canvas. Shaw hears soft movement from inside that wagon, little human exhalations, as if the person inside is trying very hard not to move. On the wind comes a hint of incense, and that's when she knows exactly who it is in that wagon. 

She should leave the witch to die, but there's something that rankles about men this crude trapping something so clever. The guards put their head together to whisper some joke, and Shaw darts unseen across the wet grass. She is inside the caravan before they've finished laughing.

It's dark in the wagon but Shaw has no problem seeing the figure hunched in the darkness. There's a rank odour of sour straw, fresh nightsoil and unwashed human, but nothing that indicates great violence. 

The witch from the catacombs sits cross-legged in the centre. She's still skinny, but now she's skinny in a way that speaks of deprivation: hollow cheeks, jutting bones, sallow skin. She's been wearing that dress for a long time, but only inside this wagon. There's grime in the creases, along the cuffs and hemline, in the folds of armpit and elbow. Her hair is as tidy as someone can make it using fingers for a comb. Her ankles are manacled in thick iron chains, and she keeps her legs very still.

Shaw is fairly certain the witch hasn't realised that she's not alone in here, because she's staring fixedly at the entrails of a dead rat. 

"I guess your elixir worked," Shaw says, and the witch jumps, then hisses as the manacles touch her skin. They leave blisters. Iron must be to witches as silver is to the undead. 

When she realises it's Shaw, the witch grins and points to the guts of the rat. "I knew something was about to happen. I'm so glad it's you, Shaw." There's a bruise over the witch's cheek, and her lower lip is split. Bruises along her arms show the clear imprint of fingers. 

Shaw is irked by the witch's confidence that this is a rescue, though it is a rescue. "How do you know I'm not here to eat you?" 

The witch smiles. "The spleen never lies. You're my knight, come to spirit me to safety." 

It's annoying that she's right. "Are you hurt?" she says, bending to snap the brittle iron locks on the manacles. The skin on the witch's ankles is fragile and badly healed. 

"No," the witch says, then winces as the second manacle falls away. Shaw picks her up by the armpits, tries to stand her up like a big doll, but her legs don't hold her up. "Well. The colonel has some baroque ideas about the craft. To his credit, I would have killed him if I could have. Some people just really don't know how to deal with the truth." 

Shaw has to carry her out, over her shoulder like a bag of flour. A bag of really squirmy flour that squeals and offers commentary on the state of Shaw's trousers. It's a long journey out of the camp. She breaks the lock on an abandoned farmhouse, and dumps the witch in the kitchen. 

"There's hens in the barn," Shaw says, by way of offering medical advice. "Eat some of them. You need the meat." She's out the door before the witch can protest. She could stay there through the day, but she's craving isolation after all that time in the camp. She barely makes it to a cave in the hills before the morning sun rolls over the land. 

A few months later in New York, Shaw wakes up and finds that someone has broken into her basement during the day. On the wooden chest she uses for a table, she finds an antique ceramic vase, painted with spotted cats and phoenixes. It's not the same as the one Shaw's mother used, though it has the bright cobalt stripes. When Shaw opens the lid, she catches the faintest odour of garlic; someone used this to make _torshi seer._ She takes out a fragment of paper from inside, and reads the note left for her by the witch. 

_IOU one rescue. Root._

* * *

1955, Virginia

The cell is very secure, with thick walls and no windows. When they first put her in here, Shaw crawled over every inch of the place, including the ceiling, but she finds no points of weakness. Now, after months of observation, experimentation and starvation, Shaw doesn't have the strength to fight them when they come to take her to the lab. 

They don't understand what she is, these idiot scientists, but they know enough to keep her restrained. They strap her to a table, set up an IV line, and start draining more of her blood. There's an answer inside her, they say. Shaw doesn't know what the question is, but she can guess. There's power in her blood. 

Later when they've taken as much as they dare, they'll feed her a little fresh blood, just enough to keep her alive, then throw her back into her cell until next time. She's just a battery to them, a machine that converts something plentiful into something precious. 

Today feels different in some way. While they drain her, Shaw dreams of the big cathedrals in Paris, the smoke and the resin of the incense, the coloured glass that she has never seen stream with sunlight. She wakes as they're dragging her back to her cell, and though they've only given her a mouthful of fresh blood, she finds herself energised enough to act. 

She has never had much of an ability to enthral, not like some other vampires she's met, but this time desperation gives her an edge. She catches the gaze of the guard on her left, and suddenly the connection clicks home. He lets go of her arm, and blinks at her with a placid smile. 

"Shoot your friend," Shaw says, her voice gravelly from shouting. She's lathered in sweat, with the effort of pouring her will into this weak-minded man, but he reaches for his gun, raises it at his partner. 

His partner, sadly, reaches out and hits the emergency button. Sirens and warning lights immediately flare, and Shaw's concentration shatters. She makes a flailing, ham-fisted attempt to grab the first man's gun; her fingers graze the cool metal of it but her muscles are too weak to make a fist. 

Ahead of them, an elevator opens, and Shaw knows it will be back-up, more troops than she could fight even if she were healthy. They'll force her back to her cell, they'll starve her till she's so weak she can't move, and they'll use her up, until there's nothing left of her. 

In the friendly yellow light of the elevator stands Root, picture-perfect in a mint suit and matching pillbox hat. She puts a white-gloved hand to her mouth in mock surprise, just like the housewives Shaw has seen on television advertisements. 

"Why, this isn't the computing lab," Root says, reaching into her purse. It matches her hat. "I wonder if you can help me – I seem to have lost my tour group." Then she draws out a pistol and shoots each guard once in the head. They crumple to the ground, and Shaw is on them in an instant, trying to get as much of their blood as she can before their hearts stop. 

While she's feeding, Shaw hears the click-click of Root's heels over the linoleum floor. Crouching over the second guard, whose heart is stuttering, Shaw looks down at the toes of Root's pale green patent leather pumps. They have little ribbon bows. They're very shiny. 

Root peers down, looking at the reflection of the man in the leather surface. Shaw is, of course, completely invisible. "Doesn't that make it difficult to put on lipstick?"

The tech's heart stops and the blood quickly turns sour. Shaw drops him to the floor and stands up, wiping her mouth on the hem of her tank top, leaving a bright red smear. "I don't wear lipstick," she says. "What are you doing here?" 

Root kisses the top of Shaw's head and drags her to the elevator. "I was in the area," she says. "And I thought that you might want to call in that IOU I left you." 

The control panel for the elevator has been removed, and wires spill out everywhere. Shaw watches, as the inadequate but incredible fresh blood start to work magic on her body. Root untwists two wires, and twists two different wires together. The elevator lurches into action, rising very quickly. 

Root stands up, and straightens her skirt, makes sure the lace on her gloves isn't twisted around. Her little hat is the colour of pashmak, the pistachio flavour, Shaw's favourite as a child. Did Root scry out that little detail? 

"You look like a dessert," Shaw says, and reaches out for Root's ridiculous tiny pearl-handled pistol. "What the fuck kind of ladylike gun is this?" She should have grabbed the guards' guns. Stupid. Starvation has made her stupid and slow. 

"Uh uh," Root says, holding the gun out of the way. "You can't shoot straight, not when you're shaking like that. Did you get enough blood from those idiots?" 

"No," says Shaw. "But it won't matter. They'll have an army waiting for us when those doors open, and you won't take them down with this pea shooter."

Root smiles at her, and loosens the ribbon on her Peter Pan collar. "Oh, Shaw, I don't need to. You're as good as an army when you're at your best." She tilts her head, exposing her bare neck. "So go ahead. Take what you need. Just leave a little for me, okay?" She pouts her lips in a moue like some baby doll pin-up girl. 

Shaw wants to say no, she wants to give Root a good shove in the belly, maybe rumple up that perfect mint jacket, but she doesn't have the luxury of pride right now. And Root is very healthy. She's put on a little muscle and fat since the last time they met. Her skin is glowing. Shaw's attention is trapped: that clean, pink skin, that thumping heartbeat. Root has a strong pulse. Shaw wants to taste it. 

Root gasps when Shaw sinks her teeth into her neck, but then she relaxes into Shaw's arms. She tastes so good. Shaw can't help but swallow and swallow, more and more of her. She had forgotten, in all her hankering for isolation, how good, how satisfying it is to feed on blood that is freely given. And she can tell that Root wants this very much. 

The doors slide open while Shaw is still feeding, and the soldiers there pause a moment, startled by the scene before them. Then Shaw lets go, turns to grin at them with her teeth extended and bloody. As she launches herself on them, she hears Root laughing softly, and she knows they're going to be okay.

* * *

New York, 2013 

Cole dies in her arms, and it's fucked, it's so fucked. 

He'd made her promise, back when they started working together, that she wouldn't turn him. 

"I need to get this out of the way," he says in that first week. "I'm not vampire material. The way you heal, the endurance you have? Pretty sure you'll be the one walking away from a scenario that gets me dead. Which is fine, we both know what we signed up for. But I don't want you to make me one of you, okay?" 

Shaw slugs down her twentieth shot and grins at him. "You've got high hopes, Cole, that I'm gonna care enough to open a vein and make you my vampire son."

Cole, on his ninth shot, is already sliding off his chair. "Ah, you'll get to love me," he says. "I'm really likeable. But I'm serious, Shaw. You're seven hundred years old." He shakes his head. "No, I can't be that. I want my natural human span and that's it." 

Shaw laughs. "Freak. Most people would give their left leg for immortality." 

Cole picks up his tenth shot and watches as it makes a wobbly path to his mouth. He swallows it and blinks at her. "Promise me," he says, as his body goes limp and he slithers to the floor. "Promise." 

Shaw has to carry him all the way back to their hideout, all hopelessly slack arms and legs. Years later, holding him in that flophouse as his heart stutters out, as his blood soaks into her knees, she feels her teeth extend, feels her heart start to beat in readiness to bring him back to life. She is ashamed at how close she gets to draining him dry, filling him up with her own blood. It's only the arrival of the next wave of gunmen that snaps her out of that trance, and then it's too late. 

In the Suffolk Hotel, her muscles are bunched and ready to act, her teeth halfway emerged. She hates being active in the daylight. She'd only started to be able to do it in the last twenty years, and it is exhausting. Add to that the bullet wound, and the fact that Cole is dead, and she's ready to snap Veronica Sinclair's neck like a twig. 

It's probably lucky that Veronica Sinclair is Root. Root knows what Shaw is capable of, when she's in full monster mode. 

Shaw loses the last of her control when she sees Root. Her feet leave the ground as she leaps, and then the two of them are rolling over and over on the carpet. She's so angry that it's her blood keeping Root alive, that it could have kept Cole alive too. She feels stupid for honouring his wishes instead of just forcing the change on him. Somehow this is all Root's fault. 

"Shh," says Root, stroking her hair. "Shh, it's okay. It's not your fault, it's his choice, you did the right thing." 

They're lying together on the floor, and Root's arms are tight around Shaw's body. Shaw wonders how Root knows about Cole, about what happened, then she sees the cards strewn across the coffee table. It's easy to forget that Root has her own kind of power. 

"Why are you okay with this stuff?" Shaw asks, in the quiet of the room. "Why does it scare the shit out some people, but not you?" 

Root strokes the hair out of Shaw's eyes, kisses her forehead. "I never said it didn't frighten me, Shaw. But I always knew I had more to do than my years would allow. You know that – you were there at the start. Maybe your friend was more at peace with the idea of ending," Root says. "I'm not, for the record." The smell of incense still hangs faintly about her, even after centuries. It's a comforting smell, one that brings to mind the memory of Shaw's mother burning _esfand_ to ward off bad spirits. 

Shaw doesn't understand why Root's words soothe her, why it helps her mind find a place for Cole's decision. It does, though. Her rage is cooling, leaving behind it a cold, steely need to enact revenge. 

A phone chimes on the coffee table, and Root pulls them both upright, though she doesn't let go of Shaw. "That's my proximity alert," she says, apologetic. "Wilson's goons are one floor down. You don't look great – do you want to…" she proffers her neck. "Or you could eat Veronica," she says, pointing at the bathroom. 

Shaw doesn't eat Veronica. She's too angry to settle for stranger's blood today, not when Root is here and willing. Root's blood is red and rich, full of power and venomous glee. It leaves Shaw twitching and ready to fight.

Before Root leaves, she kisses Shaw hard on the mouth. "Don't shoot the one in the good suit," she says. "The cards say he'll be useful later." 

When Wilson's goons arrive, both in extremely cheap off-the-rack menswear, they don't stand a chance. 

The man behind them in the tailored suit and no tie? Shaw lets him live. Root is usually right about these things.

* * *

New York, 2016

Root's heart is still beating when Shaw makes it through the doors of the ER, but she hears it falter, then falter again. She keeps running, elbows the security guard in the guts, leaps over a gurney like an Olympic hurdler. Fusco, she sees briefly at the doors to the operating rooms, and though she's moving faster than he should be able to perceive, he pushes those swinging doors open in time for her to fly through. 

"Go get her," he says, and then steps in the way of the security team, bumbling around, slowing them down long enough for her to reach Root's side. 

Nurses and orderlies look confused as Shaw passes them, and then she's in the OR, beside Root's body. 

"This is a sterile suite!" a surgeon shouts at her, but she ignores him, gets right up on the table. Root's heartbeat fails, fluttering and spasming in defib, but the myocardium is still moving, it still counts, she's still alive enough to save. Shaw rips out the tubing, cradles Root's body in her arms, crouching over her, letting her head loll back to expose her throat.

The room goes eerily silent when Shaw's fangs emerge, but she doesn't have time to think about that, about people seeing her do this, about what they'll tell their friends. It doesn't matter. None of it matters if Root doesn't survive. 

Root's blood is not okay, it's deoxygenated and full of IV fluids, nothing like the sweet, vital stuff that Shaw has tasted over the years. On this occasion, the last time Root's blood will pass her lips, it doesn't matter. Shaw is not drinking for sustenance. This is life-saving. 

Shaw lets the lifeless body drop, hisses at the people in the OR, operating purely on instinct now. She's never done this before, she only knows how because of her own second birth. She runs a nail down her wrist, feels blood welling, and presses it to Root's mouth. 

Nothing happens. Blood spills out of Root's mouth, trickles down her chin, drips to the floor with a rhythmic sound that is perfectly audible in the silent OR. 

"Come on," Shaw says, the words indistinct with her fangs fully extended. "You can do this. Root. Please. Swallow." 

Did her lips move? Shaw licks the blood off her own lips, tastes the bitterness of the atropine they used to try to restart Root's heart. Something brushes the soft skin of Shaw's wrist, and yes, it's Root, swallowing and swallowing again. Another swallow, and now it's clear that she is moving, she brings her hands up to grip Shaw's wrist, bring it closer to her mouth, make a proper seal around the wound. 

"That's it," Shaw says. "You stubborn, stubborn woman. You're not ready to die." 

God damn it, are all newborns this strong? Root's grip on Shaw's wrist is vice-like. Shaw tries to pull herself free, tries with both hands and fails. In desperation, she grabs the blood bag hanging beside the operating table and punctures it with her thumbnail. Blood oozes out, red and thick, and Root's nostrils flare. 

"Here," Shaw says. "This is the good stuff." 

Root grabs for the bag, and scuttles away off the operating table, searching for the darkest part of the room. Shaw knows how she feels; she's lost enough of her own blood herself. Draining Root was not nourishing. She eyes the remaining staff in the OR – a lot of them have fled by now – and considers taking a mouthful of them. 

Then Fusco is there, all official with his badge and his authority. He clears the room, gets the horrified staff out of danger, and returns with a blanket which he drapes over Shaw's shoulders. 

"You okay?" he says to Shaw, while he takes off his watch and rolls up his cuff. "Is she?"

Root is huddled under an instrument tray, holding onto her bag of blood. When Shaw goes near her, Root snarls, a long, rippling sound that is pretty devoid of intelligence. 

"She'll be fine," says Shaw. "I'm pretty sure." 

"You're pretty sure?" Fusco proffers his wrist. "Here, drink up. I gotta feeling you'll need your strength with Snagglepuss here." 

The first realisation hits Shaw: she's responsible for teaching Root how to live a civilised unlife. She takes Fusco's arm, and puts her mouth to it, tries hard not to cut too deeply when she sinks her own fangs in. When the second realisation hits, that she's going to be spending the rest of eternity with this person, she smiles. 

"Easy," says Fusco, as a rivulet of blood trickles down his arm. "I didn't make all this goodness for you to spill it on the floor." 

Root comes creeping out from her hiding place, drawn by the warm, living blood. Without letting go of Fusco, Shaw grabs for her, pulls her into a headlock while she thrashes. 

Fusco laughs. "Parenthood is a truly beautiful thing, Sameen. Maybe we can share tips some time?" 

Shaw holds Root tight. It was Root who forced her to leave the safety of isolation all those years ago in Paris. It was Root who Shaw kept coming back to, long after the IOU was paid, down centuries, across oceans, through wars. Now they have a family, a team, and friends. Root had been right. It's good to be with people. Especially people like these.


End file.
